Someone recently sent me a link to a very cool website post about a fellow who created a digital projection map for his Dungeons & Dragons game sessions. I thought this was pretty cool, and it made me investigate Roll20.net, a digital tabletop for traditional pen and paper RPGs. I’d seen the site once before, and messed around with it a little bit, but didn’t get into it very much. This time, however, it got my creative juices flowing again, and I got to thinking about learning the system in order to get a gaming session going. So I picked up the 5th Edition D&D starter set. I’m starting to look forward to doing this again. With any luck, I should have a first adventure setup within a few weeks as I learn Roll20, and hope to one day get a regular gaming group...

Frodo received 2 drones for Christmas in 2014. One tiny Hubsan X4 H107C from his maternal grandfather, and a Syma X5C knockoff (the QX-755) from his uncle. The former comes equipped with an HD camera. The latter didn’t, but the camera was purchased by my brother on Christmas Eve and arrived last week (while I had to jerry-rig the camera since it wasn’t made for this quad, it still takes HD video at the push of the button). While Frodo hasn’t flown them much, he’s starting to pick up on the operation very quickly, far faster than I have, so I’m having to practice quite a bit in order to keep up with him. Another thing that I’m extremely cognizant of is the danger imposed by these little bits of fantastic tech. They HURT. Those of you who know me know I sport long hair, usually tied into a ponytail. Well, for the Hubsan X4’s maiden voyage inside our living room, I wasn’t sporting the tail, and let’s just say that the new rule in this house is that when the copters fly, ALL hair is tied back and hidden under a hat. I have two extra bald-spots that necessitated the new rule (not to mention the 2 or so...

An early artwork (unfinished) Prologue: Dante My feet glide effortlessly over the raw rock, bits of dust and detritus billowing behind me as I run. My breaths come in steady rhythm, the nanites increasing the flow of oxygen and nitrogen from my lungs into my blood with increased efficiency as they work their invisible magic. My two hearts flood nutrients into every cell of my being. I am the living embodiment of creation, personified in a five hundred thousand year old lifeform. I race across this broken, vulcanized world in an effortless glide, as easily as you walk to your corner market. Your fastest ground vehicles cannot compare to the speed which I traverse the landscape. I am Dante, the DaVincian, and I am the last of my kind. Five hundred thousand years ago, when I was born, we were an ancient peoples already, rising up from the forest-tops of our ancient trees – not your broad-leafed kind, with skins the size of your palm in verdant greens and amber yellows, but real trees. The kind with the gossamer filaments of magenta and cyan, that sway on songwaves, filaments of ghostly tenuousness that threaten to die the moment they sprout into existence, that glow in preternatural glory, shining brighter than...

I admit I wasn’t always a fan of Wil Wheaton. But I was a kid when he was a kid, and didn’t know how to separate his character from his real life. He and I are so close in age, yet I have had a hard time realizing this. Years later, after reading his blog about his “dungeon master’s dice,” and his son wanting to use them to build his character (NOOOOOO! THESE ARE DM DICE! THEY CANNOT BE SULLIED!) and knowing I felt the same, I re-examined my thoughts about him, and found out just how wrong I was. (There’s a lot of soul-searching, logistics, and general dickery I had to go through to realize this, which I won’t get into much other than what is below. Suffice to say, I was a dick to Mr. Wheaton, and didn’t appreciate his talent like I should have). He was not Wesley Crusher. The only thing they had in common was that W at the beginning of their names. The writers for Star Trek didn’t do him justice, this very young actor who starred in one of my favorite movies, Stand By Me, in which he excelled as Gordie LaChance, and I’m embarrassed that I, who is savvy about a...